U.S. Pat. No. 6,257,720 discloses a glasses frame comprising a hinge means housed in the bridge connecting the two rims. Such hinge means allows the mutual rotation of the two frame rims—and of the temples hinged thereto—around a rotation axis passing through said bridge, so that after having rotated one of the two rims with respect to the other, the two temples are on opposite sides of the glasses and can thus provide protection to the lenses.
The solution disclosed by this patent, although interesting from a principle point of view, however, in actual fact cannot be applied in a satisfactory manner. As a matter of fact, it is well known that in glasses the connection bridge of the two rims, since it has to be positioned in contact with the user's nose or slightly above it, is arranged in the upper part of the front-frame, substantially aligned to the upper arc of said rims. It is hence evident that, by performing the 180° rotation of a rim with respect to the other one around a rotation axis formed within said bridge, once the rotation has occurred the two rims will be completely misaligned and the relative temples therewith.
The stated object of the patent is thereby not reached, since in the upside down position of the rims each temple nevertheless protects exclusively—as, on the other hand, occurs in a conventional pair of glasses—the inner part of the lens in a proximal position with respect to the hinge thereof, but it does not succeed instead in protecting with the terminal part thereof—as was instead in the stated intentions of the patent—the outer part of the lens in a distal position with respect to the hinge thereof due to the fact that during the 180° rotation the rim containing said lens has turned upside down with respect to the bridge and has hence fully misaligned with respect to the position occupied by the terminal part of the temple of the other rim. As a result the outer part of the lenses receives no serious protection from the terminal part of the temples in the above-said upside-down position, not allowing hence to achieve the improvement with respect to the preexisting situation disclosed in the patent in question.
In addition thereto, it must also be pointed out that in the above-said 180° upturned position of the two rims, the glasses take up a fully disassembled layout, with the two rims fully off-center with respect to the rotation axis around the nosepiece of the glasses and the terminal part of the relative temples thus occupies a substantially empty space. In other words, the bulk of the glasses in the plane in which the two rims lie is substantially doubled, with evident negative consequences both from a comfort point of view in putting away or handling the glasses, and from an aesthetic point of view.
The object of the present invention is hence to propose a glasses frame which offers the same innovative performances which have been proposed for the frames disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,257,720, which performances are not obtained instead by the solution disclosed in such patent for the reasons set forth above. In particular hence, a frame which allows to avoid, in a very simple and immediate manner, the risk of damage of the lenses when putting the glasses in a closed position onto a resting plane.
Another object of the present invention is to offer a glasses frame which enjoys such innovative performances regardless of the material making up the frame, that is, in particular both for frames of plastic and metal or composite material, and of the specific glasses model.
These objects, are reached through a glasses frame of the type comprising a front-frame, two temples (4, 5) connected to said front-frame by hinges which allow the rotation of the temples (4, 5) from a work position substantially perpendicular to the front-frame, to wear the glasses, up to a home position substantially parallel to the front-frame, to put away the glasses, said front-frame comprising two rims (2, 3) for lenses support and possibly a bridge (1) connecting said rims and wherein there is provided at least a hinge means (C) apt to allow the mutual rotation by at least 180° of said rims (2, 3) around a rotation axis (X-X), characterised in that said rotation axis (X-X) substantially lies in a plane containing the two centres of said rims (2, 3) and perpendicular to the rims, and in that said temples (4, 5) are directly hinged onto the rims (2, 3). Other preferred features of such frame are defined in the dependent claims.